BETTY NEUMAN

Marian Mendoza RN MAN

BETTY NEUMAN: HEALTH CARE SYSTEM
MODEL
Neuman System Model
• Betty Neuman (1924 – 2012)
• is a nursing theorist who developed the Neuman
Systems Model. She gave many years perfecting
a systems model that views patients holistically.
She inquired about theories from several
theorists and philosophers and applied her
knowledge in clinical and teaching expertise to
develop the Neuman Systems Model that has
been accepted, adopted, and applied as a core
for nursing curriculum in many areas worldwide.
BETTY NEUMAN’S SYSTEM MODEL
• Betty Neuman’s system model provides a
comprehensive, flexible, holistic and system based
perspective for nursing.
• It focuses attention on the response of the client
system to actual or potential environmental stressors.
• The use of primary, secondary and tertiary nursing
prevention intervention for retention, attainment,
and maintenance of optimal client system wellness.
She asserted that nursing is a unique profession
in that it is concerned with all variables affecting
an individual’s response to stresses, which are:
 Interpersonal ( within the individual )
 Interpersonal (between one or more other
people)
 Extra personal stress invasion, to protect the
client’s basic structure and obtain or maintain
a maximum level of wellness
BASIC ASSUMPTIONS OF NEUMAN’S THEORY

1. Each client system is unique, a composite of

factors and characteristics within a given
range of responses contained within a basic
structure.
2. Many known, unknown and universal
stressors exist. Each differ in it’s potential for
disturbing a client’s usual stability level or
normal Line of Defense.
3. Stressors both universal and known; some
are unique to the client. They have potential to
disturb equilibrium, thus causing a change in
priority of needs at any given moment.
4. Man is a composite of the interrelationship
of the four variables ( biological, psychological,
socio-cultural and developmental) which are
at all times present.
5. Each client/ client system has evolved a
normal range of responses to the environment
that is referred to as a normal Line of Defense.
The normal Line of Defense can be used as a
standard from which to measure health
deviation.
6. When the flexible Line of Defense is no longer
capable of protecting the client/ client system,
against an environmental stressor, the stressor
breaks through the normal Line of Defense.
 BASIC ASSUMPTIONS
• Primary prevention relates to general knowledge
applied to clients assessment to identify stressors
before they occur.
• Secondary prevention relates to symptomatology.
These are interventions generally initiated after an
encounter with a stressor.
• Tertiary prevention relates to the adaptive process,
as reconstitution begins and moves back towards
primary prevention. These are the interventions
initiated after treatment.
STAGES OF NURSING PROCESS (BY NEUMAN

1. NURSING DIAGNOSIS
• It depends on acquisition of appropriate database;
the diagnosis identifies, assesses, classifies, and
evaluates the dynamic interaction of the five variables.
• Variances from wellness (needs and problems) are
determined by correlations and constraints through
synthesis of theory and data base.
• Broad hypothetical interventions are determined, i.e.
maintain flexible line of defense.
 STAGES OF NURSING PROCESS (BY
 2. NURSING GOALS
NEUMAN
• These must be negotiated with the patient, and take
account of patient’s and nurse’s perceptions of variance
from wellness.
3. NURSING OUTCOMES
• Nursing intervention using one or more preventive modes.
• Confirmation of prescriptive change or reformulation of
nursing goals.
• Short term goal outcomes influence determination of
intermediate and long – term goals.
• A client outcome validates nursing process.